


if the world was ending

by accioharry



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accioharry/pseuds/accioharry
Summary: It didn’t take her long to figure out Peter was Spiderman; she had her suspicions ever since the D.C trip. Once she blipped back and learned Peter did too, one of the first things she did was go on the internet to figure out if Spiderman was in New York during the last five years.There had been no sighting of Spiderman since 2018. From that moment on, she knew she was right.Endgame AU. Michelle helps Peter through the aftermath of the end of the world.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go, a new fic! I got inspired a few days ago, and finally sat down to write. I want to work on this for a while, so please bear with me! My writing needs major improvement, and I wanted this chapter to be longer, but the words stopped cooperating with me. This chapter may be re-done/re-edited as my writing improves (hopefully) over time!

Michelle always hated unpacking. Her parents hadn’t ‘blipped’ like she did, and over the past five years, they kept her room exactly the same –– minus a few boxes here and there. To say she gave them the scare of a lifetime when she appeared into the middle of the living room is an understatement, to say the least. She nearly fainted when her parents told her it was 2023 and half the world had blipped alongside her. Her younger brother was in college now, two years ahead of her, and even worse…older than her. Was she still in high school? There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered, problems to figure out, and solutions to find. Her family had it lucky compared to others, they never lost their home or their jobs and that was only because the rest of her family was not erased from existence like she was.

* * *

Though her room was the same, she wasn’t. It was her Mom who suggested they use this opportunity to redesign her room, a project Michelle wanted to do, but never got around to. Some of the things that were packed had been donated, some were put on her new cream-colored walls, or on her new bookshelf in the corner. It felt like a fresh start, and the project gave her something to focus on that she could control. She lost five years of her life but didn’t age a single minute. Her parents pulled her old laptop from storage, and once it had charged up, all she did was read article after article about events over the past five years. She found herself making a timeline, using sticky notes to mark important events she missed.

  
“What is it for?” Her brother asked one day as he helped their Dad put together her new desk since her old one had been moved into her brother’s room.

  
“It just…helps,” she shrugged. He didn’t ask about it again.  
  
Midtown High announced the kids who blipped were to restart the school year they were in five years ago, and none of Michelle’s friends were happy about it. To be honest, Michelle wanted to finish school online at first, until she learned the majority of the kids she knew, Betty, Ned, Peter, and even Flash, all blipped as well. It would be weird having junior year restart when half the kids were in seventh grade the last time she went to school, but she would have some normalcy back. Her family had done a good job of trying to treat her the same, but sitting next to your suddenly taller and older younger brother gave Michelle a headache every night at dinner.

  
She wasn’t surprised she hadn’t seen any of her friends since they returned, there was just so much to do, so much to catch up on– things Michelle never would have even thought of. The world hadn’t modernized and in fact, was slowly rebuilding from the dystopian society it had fallen into. Every day another apartment that had been boarded up, opened up again for someone who had been displaced during the blip. Michelle hardly recognized any of her neighbors anymore. Her favorite small shops had shut down or were in the process of being built back up. She went on walks around the neighborhood with her family but seeing all the remains of destruction and rebuilding that were being done, it was too much.

  
Her parents collected a ton of books over the years, always finding new releases they think she would have liked. Her bookshelf was full of the ones she owned before, but in a stack next to it stood books she read every night when she couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t used to the silence of the city like her family, or the darkness that came when she closed her eyes. There used to be sounds of the city, of cars and people living their lives. She felt like a child that first night, sneaking into her parents’ bed as though she was four years old. The silence was too much for her to handle on her own. They didn’t question it and let her sleep snuggled in between the two of them. When they all woke up that morning and found her brother asleep at the end of the bed with his arm wrapped around Michelle’s foot as though he was terrified she’d turn to dust again, they didn’t question that either.

  
It was only a few weeks after that her Mom admitted that her brother, who was in the living room the day Michelle blipped, struggled ever since. Until that conversation, Michelle never thought about how it felt for those left behind, about her then thirteen-year-old brother having to call her parents at work hoping they were still alive after seeing his sister literally turn to dust particles in front of him. She blinked, and he was eighteen and going to NYU in the fall. Before the blip, Michelle hadn’t even thought about what colleges she’d apply to.

* * *

The night Peter called her started out on a perfectly normal night. Michelle finished dinner with her family, watched Netflix with her Dad and brother (they were working through The Walking Dead –– Michelle’s favorite show that ended after she blipped), and had a deep conversation with her Mom while she tried to fall asleep. She felt embarrassed at first for needing a nightlight in her room and her Mom to stay until she fell asleep. Just like the first night, her parents never asked questions, and Michelle’s therapist encouraged them to let her take the lead on readjusting to society, meaning her family was in no hurry to see her get a part-time job anytime soon, thank goodness.

  
Her Mom left shortly after she fell asleep but Michelle had already woken up again. She had her lamp on and was reading quietly when her phone buzzed next to her. Her eyes widened when she saw Peter’s name on the caller ID. She hadn’t heard from him in months…actually, in years.

  
“Hello?” She held the phone against her ear as she got up to close her bedroom door softly and flicked on her light as she walked back to sit on her bed.

  
She heard sniffling on the other line followed by a broken soft cry, as though the person on the other end was trying to hold it together. Her stomach dropped. “Peter? Are you there?”

  
“Yeah,” his voice was so quiet, Michelle double checked to make sure her volume was all the way up. She knew he was still in New York; there was a group text for the kids she was “close to” in her grade who blipped as well. The majority of the time they sent memes they missed out on, but Michelle quickly noticed that Peter never replied to anything, not even the dumb memes Ned sent.

  
“I…” she trailed off, biting her lip. She had no idea what to say to Peter, what do you say to the boy just lost one of the most important people in his life while fighting the universe’s greatest war, but didn’t know that you knew?

  
It didn’t take her long to figure out Peter was Spiderman; she had her suspicions ever since the D.C trip. Once she blipped back and learned Peter did too, one of the first things she did was go on the internet to figure out if Spiderman was in New York during the last five years.

  
There had been no sighting of Spiderman since 2018.

  
From that moment on, she knew she was right. She just couldn’t tell Peter that now and definitely couldn’t tell him she had a feeling she knew why he was upset. She sat in silence while she waited for him to talk. If there was anything she learned about herself since coming back –– she hated being rushed to talk about her experiences. Her life was boring compared to Peter, _who fought against Thanos himself and saw his mentor die in front of him_. Yeah, she wasn’t going to rush him.

  
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, “I didn’t…Ned is already asleep, and I didn’t want to wake Aunt May.”

  
“That’s okay,” she shrugged even though he couldn’t see it. “I guess all of us who blipped aren’t sleeping well,” she knew that from the group chat because it was almost most active at night, a nice distraction from her new fear of the dark.

  
“No, we aren’t,” he mumbled. Michelle waited for him to continue and when he didn’t, decided the last thing she wanted to do was make things more awkward. She was curious as to why he called her and not anyone else, but again, not a question she could bring up easily.

  
“Is there anything specific you wanted to talk about?” She pondered, “or do you just want to hear someone talk about something that isn’t…you know,” she trailed off.

  
Peter seemed to understand where she was going with her sentence. He went quiet for a moment. “What are you reading right now?”

  
She laughed softly, rolling onto her stomach to grab the book she was reading, flipping through the pages. “How did you know I was reading?”

  
“You had a different library book every week, I figured you have a lot to catch up on now,” she swore she heard a little chuckle in his voice. The thought made her warm inside.  
“Well you’re right and it’s quite interesting, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear me talk about a book, do you?” Teasing him felt like coming home, she forgot how easy their banter was and how much she missed it –– _missed him_.

  
“I do actually if you don’t mind,” he didn’t have to be in front of her for Michelle to know he was kicking himself for sounding like an awkward pre-teen, but she found it endearing. She always did.

  
“I don’t mind one bit,” she flipped to the opening cover and began to summarize what she had read so far, even letting Peter jump in to ask questions.

The two of them stayed on the phone for over an hour and eventually started talking about “normal” life. It felt completely natural to talk to him. Michelle didn’t bother to hide how thankful she was that Peter didn’t age five years without her. The thought alone made her uncomfortable and she shivered, wishing she hadn’t thought about it in the first place.

* * *

“Are you still there?” Peter’s voice came through the phone. She had turned her light off (but not the nightlight) and put Peter on speaker so she could lie down in bed. She wasn’t tired originally, but suddenly she was exhausted.

  
“Yeah, I think I’m going to fall asleep soon…which I don’t like doing anymore,” she admitted. Her filter always went out of the window when she was falling asleep.

  
“We can always talk tomorrow if you want,” she smiled hearing him say that and did her best to ignore the little butterflies floating around in her stomach. Her little crush on Peter could not make its second debut while the world had just started to rebuild itself for crying out loud.

  
“I’d like that,” she said, snuggling further into her blankets. “Peter? Do you think…you could stay on the phone until I fall asleep?” She pulled the blankets over her head, as though she was afraid to hear his answer. “I can’t…I don’t like falling asleep anymore.”

  
“Of course,” he didn’t hesitate. “I can talk about Star Wars for hours, you know that.”

  
“Ugh,” she laughed. “Go for it, I’ll fall asleep right away.”

  
She heard Peter make a sound of mock offense and shock before he began his long speech about the plot of Star Wars in full, and Michelle fell asleep just as he was telling her all about Luke Skywalker finding out about his real father.

  
The next morning, she woke to a text from Peter, asking if she wanted to meet him for coffee.

  
She said yes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps she could finally call him a friend, maybe even on the way to being her best friend. She couldn’t ruin that now, but she couldn’t watch him ruin himself either. She found herself at a crossroads, wondering what mattered more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2 is here! i spent quite a long time with this one and i really wanted to make it longer, but i decided chapter 3 would be better for the next setting of this fic! regardless, i hope you enjoy and thank you for all the love so far!

They agreed to meet at a coffee shop near Central Park, a place Michelle frequented often on the weekends with her family.

While she was gone, parts of the park had been turned into a memorial for the fallen; a memorial that was currently in limbo of whether it would stay up or not. She took note of the number of families in the park, as though they were cherishing every moment they had together. She never thought she’d feel that way at her age.

She found Peter outside the Starbucks with a hot coffee already in his hand. Even though she mentally prepared herself, Michelle felt the ground sway beneath her as soon as she saw Peter’s face. He had a scar on his cheek as though stitches were there a few months ago, but what shocked Michelle the most was how exhausted he looked. He looked so stricken with grief, as though something awful had completely shattered him into pieces.

He still looked the same with the unruly curly hair and the chocolate brown eyes that she caught staring at her more than once in decathlon practice. Except when he lifted his head to acknowledge her and she saw his eyes, the little sparkle of mischief was gone. In a way, she barely recognized him.

“Iced latte with almond milk?” He nodded to the iced coffee on the bench next to him. She took it graciously, shock evident on her face as she sat next to him on the bench. Her words caught in her throat for a moment, as though she had no idea what to say next.

“Peter,” she tapped his shoulder and he turned to her. He winced as she examined the scar. “That wasn’t there before.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he shrugged, sipping his coffee. Michelle wanted to argue with him so badly, wanted to push him to tell her everything he kept from her, but she just couldn’t. Not when he looked so destroyed.

“I think after recent events, nothing would surprise me,” she smiled slightly. It took everything in her to not ask questions –– his battle scars were so prominent, she wasn’t prepared for it.

“Challenge accepted and noted for the future,” Peter replied. “Did you sleep well?”

“I wouldn’t say I slept great, but it’s gotten better over time,” she leaned back against the bench, tucking her feet under her. “It’s getting easier to be in the dark, even if…it was instant for us,” she muttered before looking up at him. He was staring straight ahead, as though his focus was the only thing keeping him sane. “Are you sleeping?” She already knew the answer.

He sighed, sipping the coffee again before leaning forward on his elbows. “Would you believe me if I said I was?”

“Not for a second,” she wanted to confide in him, to tell him that she wants to be there for everything. The death of Tony Stark hit him like a train—she could see it in his eyes. He was still sixteen, technically, but he acted so much older now, as though he aged the five years in a matter of five minutes. It would be so easy to grab his hand and tell him that she was here, and wanted to understand. So why couldn’t she?

“This is the first time I went out of the apartment,” he admitted. “I’ve wanted to, but I spent the first few weeks––“ he cut himself off before he slipped up, “upstate. I was upstate, but May found an apartment for us, so we came back finally.”

“I haven’t gone out much either,” she said softly. “Only with my family, but never on my own. It’s different now, for all of us.”

“Yeah,” Peter sipped his coffee again, and Michelle could’ve sworn he was holding back tears. “It’s different.”

The two of them sat in silence for a long time, watching the world move around them. It was hard to tell who had blipped and who didn’t because from the outside, it looked as though society was rebuilding itself just fine. Michelle knew better than that, and also knew how easy it was for Peter to get lost in his own thoughts. She glanced at him.

“Do you want to take a walk?” 

* * *

She missed hearing Peter’s rambles about pure nonsense.

He was reluctant to take the walk, but Michelle pulled him up by the arm until he finally agreed. Getting back in the world was hard, but having Peter by her side made it a little easier, she was certain of that.

“So basically, they still made the last Star Wars film, and it’s been out for YEARS,” Peter huffed. “I can’t believe it, I knew they filmed already before the blip, but they could have waited until we came back.”

“Okay in the defense of Hollywood, they didn’t know that we’d come back,” Michelle smiled. “You’re just mad you didn’t get to see it in theatres.”

“I’m not mad about that, I’m mad that I didn’t get to go to the premiere. The freaking premiere! I missed it and it will never happen again,” he grumbled. “It’s rude.”

“How is that rude?” she laughed. “You’re so grumpy about this!”

“If it was a good movie I’d understand, but it was so bad MJ, you don’t understand.” He kept rambling, and Michelle’s heart did a flip hearing him call her MJ again. It’s been quite a while since she heard that nickname.

“I watched it with my brother,” she cut him off before he could continue. “It…had its good moments.” She rolled her eyes at the look of disgust on Peter’s face. “It did!”

“You’re defending the worst film in the saga, I hope you know that.”

“Says the boy whose favorite character was _Jar Jar Binks_ in sixth grade.”

“I still can’t believe Ned told you that, I told him that in confidence.”

“and now it is a small fact about you that I will cherish forever,” she grinned, elbowing him in the side. It didn’t seem to bother him.

“You mean you’ll hold it over me for the rest of my life?” Peter scoffed, dumping his empty coffee cup in a trash can as they walked.

“Same thing,” she smiled, and Peter’s face lit up.

“So what, ten years from now you’ll send me an outdated Jar Jar Binks meme from a blocked number, taunting me once again?”

“I would never do such a thing,” Michelle faked offense. “I’d mail it to you, obviously.”

It surprised her to see Peter double over in laughter. She didn’t realize she was being funny, but it made him smile, so she went with it. For a brief moment in time, all of his suffering was gone, vanished as though it had been blipped permanently. She willed her mind to remember the moment for as long it would allow her, because a happy Peter Parker was officially her favorite Peter Parker.

* * *

It was an hour later when Michelle decided she had enough.

Even if Peter smiled with her, it lasted for a brief moment before his face fell again.

She could tell Peter was in pain, he looked so lost. His eyes never focused on anything, his sentences went unfinished when he got deep in his thoughts, and call it instinct, but she just _knew._

“Okay,” she huffed, and Peter turned back to look at her, not realizing she had stopped walking. “Sit down.”

He looked around. They were still in the park, but not in an area where many empty benches were prominent. “Where?”

“On the ground, where else?”

He opened his mouth as though he wanted to argue, but thought differently when he saw the look of determination on her face. He followed Michelle off the path and into the grass. She sat down, patting the space beside her.

Even though it was still summer it was an overcast day, which to be honest, really reflected the mood Peter was in. He knew Michelle suspected something but was he ready to tell her?

“Hey,” she muttered after a period of silence. “Talk to me.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing for two hours?” Peter’s eyes weren’t focused on her, but on the grass, he was picking with his hands. He was caught, and he knew it.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

The silence was deafening and actually made her uncomfortable. For someone who spent most of her school years avoiding crowds and sitting in the library, she felt almost claustrophobic in the current silence.

She wanted to shake him — to yell in his face that she knows and she wants to help him. If she did that, she’d scare him off and he would never trust her again. They had gotten closer in the past twenty-four hours than they ever had been before the blip, before anything really.

Perhaps she could finally call him a friend, maybe even on the way to being her best friend. She couldn’t ruin that now, but she couldn’t watch him ruin himself either. She found herself at a crossroads, wondering what mattered more.

“Peter, please,” she tried again. “Talk to me, I’m here, aren’t I? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to help.”

“You don’t understand,” he shrugged, his head lowered. “You wouldn’t understand. I can’t just tell you, it’s not that easy,” he winced, as though the words caused him physical pain. “I want to, I wish I could tell someone but—” He trailed off.

She didn’t know what to say. Her limbs felt heavy, as though the weight of the world had fallen upon her. A weight of guilt, for thinking she could fix everything by being there, for thinking Peter would easily open up to her just because she was there. That’s not how it worked and she knew that. She just didn’t want to believe it. Life was never kind enough to give her what she wanted.

Perhaps it was the blip itself, a force of the universe that created a bond between the fallen, the ones who were brought back. Maybe she just wanted a friend, someone who went through what she did. But that wasn’t Peter. He had gone through so much more, and Michelle hated watching him struggle with his demons on his own.

“I won’t force you to tell me anything,” Michelle said finally. “If anything, I just want you to know that I would never, ever, do that.”

“I know,” he shrugged, his voice quiet. “I want to, I really do because I know it would help, but I can’t put that on you. I can’t ask you to walk this with me.” 

"Then don’t,” the sincerity in her voice made Peter turn his head towards her. “Don’t ask me, because I’m offering, whenever you’re ready, I’m there.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Got it?”

“Yeah,” he nodded with a small smile, but Michelle could see it in his eyes, he didn’t believe her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you catch the far from home (train) reference? i felt kind of bad writing it in, but i couldn't pass up the opportunity! thank you for reading, and i'll see you for chapter 3 soon!


End file.
